Gandhi at Dandi

If every U. S. citizen who disapproves of Prohibition should set up and work a tiny still in front of his house, the police might or might not jail the tens of millions of lawbreakers, the 18th Amendment might or might not have to be repealed.

It was this sort of movement which famed Mahatma Gandhi started last week at Dandi, a miserable little beach town on the west coast of India. Wading into the warm rollers of the Arabian Sea, he and 76 followers scooped up a little water, set it on the beach to be evaporated by the sun, thus broke the British law which makes the extraction or sale of salt a British monopoly.

While Mr. Gandhi sat waiting for the water to evaporate, 319,000,000 Indians were comparatively peaceful. No riots, bloodshed or violence of any sort had marked his march on foot 165 miles from Ahmadabad to the sea at Dandi in 25 days (TIME, March 24 et seq.). He had broken the law against seditious utterance at every village on the march. He had obtained the resignation of dozens of village officials, the pledge of hundreds of villagers to join in his movement of Mass Civil Disobedience.

These things were happening and yet the British Government of India did nothing last week. His Majesty's viceroy, Baron Irwin, sat as placidly and as expectantly at his desk in Government House, New Delhi, as did St. Gandhi by the sea. When the sun evaporated enough water to produce a few pinches of salt the momentous grains were sold to eager bidders for a total of $160. This act was analogous to a sale in the middle of Main Street of a case of Scotch.

In singsong voices disciples of the Saint read to him passages from the sacred Vedas. As nothing continued to happen, he spoke:

"I am not so foolish as to imagine the Government suddenly has lost its capacity for provoking popular resentment and then punishing with frightfulness. I wish I could believe this non-interference was due to a real change of heart and policy.

"It remains to be seen whether the Government will tolerate, as they have tolerated our march, actual breach of the salt laws by countless people.

"I expect the Government to arrest me, any moment. The British authorities are usually most quiet just before striking."

In conclusion the Saint, who is also no mean statesman, said:

"The salt tax is one of the most immoral acts this Government has ever been responsible for, especially because it is collected stealthily [i. e. as an indirect tax]. [Our] next attack should be on [other] taxes which are just as immoral. I mean the liquor and opium taxes. Through the Indian Government's monopoly of opium production, India has been made responsible for drugging the world, and her own children have been made poor and miserable by the contraction of these degenerating drink and drug habits.''*

Somewhat cryptically Mr. Gandhi added: "I am preparing a message for the women of India, who, I am becoming more and more convinced, can make a larger contribution than the men toward attainment of independence. . . . The children, let them stay at home and spin while their parents go out to court jail!"

Violence. In Calcutta, several days before St. Gandhi reached Dandi, a disturbance occurred when carters blocked the great Howrah Bridge at rush hour by removing the wheels of their carts. Police said that stones were thrown at them. They replied with bullets. Six men were killed, 60 wounded, but the disturbance then quieted. On the day of the salt-making, followers of Mr. Gandhi squatted down in front of a train near Bombay, but were beaten off by police.

As salt making demonstrations spread to other parts of India, more than 80 law-breakers were arrested, including the Mahatma's son Ram Das Gandhi. Those first brought to trial were fined up to $182 or six months in jail. A typical stroke of British statecraft was an announcement by a spokesman for the British Government that: "The Government considers Mr. Gandhi's actions merely symbolical, and not an actual violation of the law."

In the city of Bombay a mob of "Untouchables" (the despised lowest class whose status Mr. Gandhi has tirelessly sought to raise) suddenly decided, last week, to fling themselves on the ground before the holy Nasik Temple and thus obstruct Lordly Brahmans from their worship. All India shuddered at reports that an Untouchable girl had slapped the face of a Brahman priest--far worse than a Negro wench's slapping a white bishop in Dixie. One hundred Untouchables were jailed.

*The Anglo-Indian select committee on dangerous drugs unanimously recommended, last week, that the cultivation of cocoa plants for the manufacture of cocaine be authorized in India, that the sale of this drug should be a state monopoly like opium.

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